Get dangerous! Vidmar wants City to get bold with decision making
As more off-field rumours swirl around Jamie Maclaren, City coach Aurelio Vidmar wants his side to get dangerous on the ball against the Central Coast Mariners this weekend.
After habits of negativity in possession and taking the safe option in possession led to an “insipid” loss to Western Sydney, Melbourne City coach Aurelio Vidmar wants to see a bolder, more direct mindset in his side’s crunch visit to the Central Coast on Sunday.
For the first time since February of 2021, City travelled to New South Wales last week and failed to find the back of the net: blanked by the Wanderers in their Unite Round meeting and failing to a 1-0 loss.
The one-goal margin of defeat, however, somewhat underplayed how comfortable Western Sydney was against the three-time defending premiers, with their coach Marko Rudan declaring post-game that his side had “smashed” City and Vidmar saying they simply weren’t good enough.
City had 65% of possession in that game but was only able to muster a single shot on target, leading to Vidmar throwing down something of a gauntlet on Thursday, challenging his side to be better when they travel to Gosford to face a Mariners outfit undefeated in their past ten games across all competitions.
“Every team has some great strengths and some weaknesses,” said Vidmar. “And there are certainly some areas [in the Mariners] that we've discussed and trained on this week, so we'll try to exploit that.
“We had those opportunities last week but we were so negative in our play that we missed [them]. We've had a bit of that for probably the last four or five weeks where we should be a little bit more direct when we need to and we[instead] take a safer option. We've got to try and get out of that.
“Whether it's a habit, I'm not sure. But it's a mindset. When you can break and go through the middle, the quicker you can get through the middle, the better it's going to be for us.
“And we've had many opportunities. Last week we did have those opportunities, but we missed them.”
Vidmar said that he expects to have an almost full squad to choose from for the trip to Gosford, with Aziz Behich absent on Socceroos duty and Mat Leckie continuing his recovery from a torn hamstring.
Beginning to further integrate that attacker into training this week, Vidmar said that the plan for Leckie was a return to the park in “two to three weeks”, albeit he was absent from the City Football Academy on Thursday morning after waking up ill.
“That's probably due to probably the fair bit of work that he's been doing lately,” said the coach. “He's probably just broken down in terms of his immune system. That's what it seems like right now.”
Questions, too, linger over the form and future of another one of Vidmar’s attackers, and his captain, in Jamie Maclaren.
Though last year's grand final stands out as a notable counterpoint, the striker has generally found plenty of success against the Mariners, scoring 15 goals in 20 league meetings across his career, only three of which ended in losses.
He does, however, enter his 21st clash with the Gosford side in adverse form: subbed off after just 72 minutes against the Wanderers, taken off for 18-year-old Max Caputo after being credited with touching the ball just four times.
Adding distractions, earlier this week a report emerged that Maclaren had rejected a contract extension offered by the club and was searching for a move overseas, albeit cold water was poured on this by the man himself as soon as accounts brought it to his attention on Instagram, posting that there was “nothing real about this statement”.
Last week, amidst a separate set of Maclaren rumours, Vidmar said that matters of player contracts and incoming players were the realm of director of football Michael Petrillo and football operations manager Pedj Radinovic and, in the face of yet more innuendo again indicated that wasn’t his department.
“To be frank, the policy within the club is not to discuss any player's contracts and I think that's been here since day one,” he said. “So that's not going to change. Whatever it is within the club, they need to sort it out.
“We know the player that Jamie is and he's been a great player for the club. And obviously, we'd love to keep him here. In the end, they've got to decide what's in the best interest of both parties. So that's out of my hands, that's out of my control. Let's see where that goes.”
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